I recently was able to got some Lyman 225646’s and some RCBS 22-55-SP cast bullets from an avid poster and bullet caster. I am attempting to make them perform at M.O.A. at 100 yards when fired from a Super 14” Contender in .223 Remington caliber. Ain’t getting any such luck! Visually, the bullets are very good. I don’t weigh bullets and I really don’t have any intentions of doing so! Accuracy at 50+ yards is nickel-size groups for 3 shots with a couple of the powders I have tried. BUT, groups are very erratic and much, much greater than M.O.A. at 100 yards. Powders tried so far—Red Dot, Blue Dot, SR-4759, WC-680, IMR-4227, Unique, AL-8, WC-820, and WC-844. Primers have been CCI-450’s and Winchester Staynless 6 �-116. Bullets were sized to 0.224”. Some I even heat treated as this solved a problem I was having with a 7-30 Waters Contender barrel. That made it a definite M.O.A. shooter. Ain’t worked for the .223 though. Any thoughts or suggestion? Or is it just the Contender being the problem child? They are you know?!?!?!? Thanks…BCB

BCB..first are you seating the boolits out to just touch and slightly engrave in the rifling? If not try that. You didn't say what velocity you were pushing the boolits for or trying for. Another thing is try using a Dacron or Kapok filler between the boolit and the powder. Do not pack this material in there but more or less keep it fluffy between the powder and boolit. I know you don't have alot of camming power to probably get a good engraving on the boolit but at least try to touch the rifling. Try these two things and report back. No need to load a bunch, just a few for the test is fine.

Joe

starmetal

Thanks for the reply. It is impossible to seat any 22 caliber bullet that I have found to just touch the rifling in this barrel! Contender chambers are infamous for being “’bout a mile long”! The 50 grain jacketed bullet that I shoot—and it is very accurate, less than M.O.A. out to 150 yards most on the time, must JUMP an amazing 0.331” to get to the rifling. I recently tried some 80 grain Nosler and Sierra bullets to see if I could touch the rifle—no way! This may sound hard to believe, but it is a fact. I use a Sinclair Comparator to measure the distance and the OAL that a loaded round must be. Needless to say, I have purchased my last factory Contender barrel. This I also discovered with a 44 Magnum barrel I purchased over a year ago—another story…

Now to bullet jump to the rifling. I am seating the Lyman and RCBS slugs into the case JUST enough to hold them fairly stable. It is just a bit less than the .224” bullet diameter. I am also applying a minimal crimp to basically just remove the bell on the mouth of the case. Jump to the rifling for the RCBS bullet is .271” and for the Lyman bullet it is .141”. Only the check on the Lyman bullet would be seated to even approach touching the rifling. Contenders are problem children as I mentioned!!!

I am getting fairly good consistent velocity using the faster powders, especially Red Dot. They are running in the 1947 fps range. The slower burners, WC-844 in particular, were running in the 1610 fps range but the extreme spread was nearly 200 fps in some cases!!! Increasing powder charges for this particular powder caused groups in the 6” range at 100 yards!!! This powder ain’t gonna work in this cartridge with cast, yet 27 grains of it with the Hornady 50 SSPSP will shoot the sub-M.O.A. groups most of the time out to 150 yards—groups at 200 still ain’t shabby!

Fillers might be an option, but I am nervous of fillers in this little bottle neck case. Ain’t much room for that Dacron/kapok to get going out the case mouth. Might be an extremely tedious amount of work trying to put it in there also!!! My hands are a bit shaky from many years of, well, you know, the high price of low life!!! Although Super Grex, which I have a bit of and use it very sparingly, might be worth a try. Thanks for the info and the help. Keep the suggestions coming…BCB

BCB, try swapping your contender barrels with others of the same from the 1970's. They did not have this lousy freebore, or whatever you call this crap. ... felix

One thing you can check is to see if the chamber is lined up with the bore. I had a 6.5tcu that was noticably off center. If it is, send it to T/C for replacement.